


To Boldly Go

by Nyx_Ro



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, One Shot, Soulmates implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:35:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21759931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyx_Ro/pseuds/Nyx_Ro
Summary: My take on what REALLY happened to Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Denner after the events of 'Where No Man Has Gone Before'. Just a brief one-shot.
Relationships: Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Dehner
Kudos: 5





	To Boldly Go

**Author's Note:**

> So my dad and I re-watched the official pilot episode of 'Star Trek: The Original Series', which reminded me that one of the tropes that always bugged me was the blithe assumption that psychic powers make people turn evil, unless they give them up for the Greater Good... or with female characters, willingly sacrifice them for Twu Wuv. Call it the bury-your-psychics trope if you will. So I decided to write a missing scene fixit for my own satisfaction.

After the _Enterprise_ went into warp drive from planentary orbit, two attractive young humanoids materialized next to a couple of graves. One was a young man with brown hair, the other a blonde woman. Both had shimmering silver eyes.

“Aww, did you see that? Jim marked us both down as dying in the line of duty. That man!” He shook his head, an affectionate grin on his face.

The woman looked at him searchingly. “Gary, are you **sure** this entire melodrama was necessary? Couldn’t we have just explained everything to him? Did you really have to pretend that your new powers were turning you evil?”

“Ah, Elizabeth, I wish we could have also. But after I ran through all the simulations in my mind, this version gave the highest probability of success.”

He lay a friendly hand on her shoulder as they began walking away from their supposed graves. “You see, we didn’t have to figure with just Jim, but with his half-Vulcan soulmate. The poor guy is trying so hard to pretend that he doesn’t have feelings, because he believes that a “proper” Vulcan shouldn’t. Of course he believes that everyone is a seething mass of negative impulses, only held back by fear of societal punishment. Therefore, someone too powerful for any authority to punish **must** turn evil as a matter of course.” Gary gave her a roguish grin. “If you were still ship’s psychologist, Spock’s inner conflicts would have kept you busy for the next five year tour, and then some!”

She nodded thoughtfully. “But still, James Kirk is the captain. The decision was his, not Spock’s.”

“True, but no one can help being influenced by what their soulmate thinks… and feels! Even if the soulmate in question is in complete denial about having emotions.

“Plus, while it’s the captain’s decision in theory, any captain who ignores his Chief Science Officer’s advice _in regards to a possible threat to the Federation_ had better have a damn good reason why— and he’d better hope that Starfleet Command likes that reason, or he may not be captain for much longer.” Gary looked pensive. “It would kill Jim to give up being a ship’s captain,” he added softly.

He turned back to meet her eyes gravely. “Elizabeth, do you know why every member of Starfleet is routinely tested for esper abilities? It’s because at the highest echelons of command, there’s a belief that Khan Singh was researching gene-engineering humans with effective esper powers. The theory is that if he’d have succeeded, Khan would have **won** the Eugenics Wars.”

“And that’s the image Starfleet has when they think of people with esper powers: Arrogant, entitled superhumans with a drive to subjugate ‘inferiors’. Thus the belief that ‘Man cannot survive if a race of true espers is born.’.. That’s a direct quote, by the way.”

Elizabeth frowned. “A direct quote from what?”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? I read through the _Valiant_ ’s memory banks while I was ‘unconscious’ in Sickbay. All you needed to decipher them was a little psychometry. Or would the proper term be clairvoyance, since I didn’t physically handle them? Anyway, I read them.” He gave her a cheeky grin.

“What happened?” she asked gently. With her new abilities, she could feel the sadness under his act.

He sighed. “His name was Kevin Park… the esper on the _Valiant_ , I mean. It was his misfortune that he developed telekinesis first, before the intellectual boost or any information gathering espabilities. It was his further misfortune that the head security officer on the ship had a previous posting in Starfleet HQ, as part of Project Sampson, AKA the thinktank on espers.”

He bent his head, massaging his eyes. “It’s not like the security officer was a bad guy. He just kind of bought into the entire ‘espers are dangerous’ mindset. Remember, this was two centuries ago; the wounds from the Eugenics Wars were a lot fresher then. He and the rest of the task force didn’t consider that it was ideology like Khan’s which was the problem, not the abilities themselves.” Gary raised his head, and looked at her soberly. “After all, a bunch of unenhanced humans with those same ideas managed to slaughter 12 million of their fellow humans in the mid-20th century. You don’t need any special powers to be a monster; all you need is the ability to see other people as things.” Gary’s face was unwontedly somber.

“But Gary… everything you did was calculated to convince Kirk and everyone else that you **were** developing this ‘ideology’ at the same time as your powers.”

“Elizabeth… If Jim had sent off a dutiful report indicating that you and I had developed real esper abilities to Starfleet command, the Sampson Protocols mandated a kill strike on the ship.” In response to her startled look, he explained “Kevin’s telepathic abilities eventually kicked in. Too late to save him, but he was able to infuse a warning into the ship’s recorder for any future esper to read.”

Gary sighed heavily. “Jim is too good a man to have killed two crew members just for having developed psychic powers alone. But failing to do so would get him— and everyone else on board— terminated with extreme prejudice. So… I had to create a situation where Jim _believed_ I was becoming evil, so that he would be willing to kill me. Or to do what he believed would kill me.” Gary smiled fondly. “Jimmy’s got a fixed conviction that he can do anything he sets his mind to with pure stubbornness, so he’d buy that he’d successfully neutralized the ‘threat’ we supposedly posed. Remind me to tell you how he rigged the Kobayashi Maru test some time.

“So once I determined the scenario most likely to bring us all out alive, it was just a matter of controlling the pacing so that you starting manifesting your own abilities before Jim reached the point he was willing to kill. I didn’t want Jim to face that excruciating choice twice, after all.”

“Or risk that with his kill inhibition down, he’d kill me immediately before I was strong enough to protect myself?” Elizabeth asked drily.

He winced. “I guess I’m going to have to get used to not having secrets any longer. Yes, that too.”

With determined cheerfulness, Gary exclaimed, “But enough about the sad stuff! Everybody lived, Jim’s going to lie to Starfleet Command so he and the crew are safe, and you and I have the entire universe to explore! What do you want to do first?”

Elizabeth smiled. “I think I’d like to hear about how Kirk gamed the Kobayashi Maru scenario first. Then… we’ll see.”

Gary smiled back. “Well, it’s like this…”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I do hope to get back to 'So That's What It Does sometime this century! But things are complicated right now, so I have no idea when that'll be. Sorry!


End file.
